Transform Our Mind

There is a story of one Tibetan man who wanted to practice Dharma, so he spent days circumambulating holy relic monuments.

Soon his teacher came by and said, "What you're doing is very nice, but wouldn't it be better to practice the Dharma?" The man scratched his head in wonder and the next day began to do prostrations.

He did hundreds of thousands of prostrations, and when he reported the total to his teacher, his teacher responded, "That's very nice, but wouldn't it be better to practice the Dharma?"

Puzzled, the man now thought to recite the Buddhist scriptures aloud. But when his teacher came by, he again commented, "Very good, but wouldn't it be better to practice the Dharma?"

Thoroughly bewildered, the exasperated man queried his spiritual master, "But what does that mean? I thought I have been practicing the Dharma."

The teacher responded concisely, "The practice of Dharma is to change your attitude towards life and give up attachment to worldly concerns."

The real Dharma practice is not something we can see with our eyes. Real practice is changing our mind, not just changing our behavior so that we appear holy, blessed, and others say, "Wow, what a fantastic person!"

We have already spent our lives putting on various acts in an effort to convince ourselves and others that we are indeed what in fact we aren't at all. We hardly need to create another facade, this time of a super-holy person.

What we do need to do is change our mind, our way of viewing, interpreting and reacting to the world around and within us.


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Once, Bengungyel, a meditator doing retreat in a cave, was expecting his benefactor to visit.

As he set up offerings on his altar that morning, he did so with more care and in a much elaborate and impressive way than usual, hoping that his benefactor would think what a great practitioner he was and would give him more offerings.

Later, when he realized his own corrupt motivation, he jumped up in disgust, grabbed handfuls of ashes from the ashbin and flung them over the altar while he shouted, "I throw this in the face of attachment to worldly concerns."

In another part of Tibet, Padampa Sangyey, a master with clairvoyant powers, viewed all that had happened in the cave. With delight, he declared to those around him, "Bengungyel has just made the purest offering in all Tibet!"

The essence of the Dharma practice isn't our external performance, but our internal motivation.

Real Dharma is not huge temples, pompous ceremonies, elaborate dress and intricate rituals. These things are tools that can help our mind if they are used properly, with correct motivation.

We can't judge another person's motivation, nor should we waste our time trying to evaluate others' actions. We can only look at our own mind, thereby determining whether our actions, words and thoughts are beneficial or not.

For that reason we must be ever attentive not to let our minds come under the influence of selfishness, attachment, anger, etc.

As it says in the Eight Verses of Thought Transformation, "Vigilant, the moment a disturbing attitude appears, endangering myself and others, I will confront and avert it without delay."

In this way, our Dharma practice becomes pure and is effective not only in leading us to temporal and ultimate happiness, but also in enabling us to make our lives beneficial for others.


Extract from: Chocolate Frosting and Garbage, by Venerable Thubten Chodron